And I’m sure some of you do, I’d like to recommend that you check out the website of my old friend Barry Maloney.
Barry is a wonderful artist (you can read more about him on his site) and we’ve known each other for more than 20 years. He was a paste-up artist at one of the small papers where I used to work, and we used to flip Exacto knives up into the ceiling tiles for fun.
He always did his great Merv Griffin impersonation, grounded in the fact that Merv always had the strangest combination of guests, combined with a stable of regulars. So he’d intone, in a perfectly Merv voice, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a very, very special guest for you today: Pope John Paul the Second. And Hermione Gingold!” (It was always either Hermione Gingold or Susan Ford, Gerald Ford’s daughter.)
He moved up East to Boston and we lost track of each other for a long time. But I always had his two paintings featured prominently in my home, and I wondered if he was still painting.
Well, God bless the internet. I found his site a few years ago, and we started emailing occasionally. He was indeed a working artist, living in Dedham.
Then, about a year and a half ago, he told me he had pancreatic cancer.
Well, Barry probably doesn’t have much energy for selling things, and I was thinking how wonderful it would be if he knew that even more people valued his work while he was still here. He does some amazing stuff, and his prints are only $40. (I own a print of the one shown below.) So if you see something you like, please go buy it.
Interesting work. Some drawing are good. Times, however, are difficult.